Psych Error: `parse': (<unknown>): could not find expected

Question

`':' while scanning a simple key at line 16 column 1(Psych::SyntaxError)

I'm working on a Rails application tutorial and have had the above error come up several times. When I was getting this error it seemed to only be a problem if I used one particular terminal window. I have since restarted the computer and now it is a problem regardless of what I do.

I went to the project on github and copied the information in 'secrets.yml' into my file in case that was the issue but doesn't help. In fact I'm not sure if that is even the file causing the problem because when I shift the code in that file and save it I still get the same error; at those times it points to a line that is now blank in the 'secrets.yml'

Update. now I am getting this when i run this command

 rails generate simple_form:install --foundation
-bash: $: command not found.

only change I did was start the code in 'secrets.yml' lower down, and i added a secret key to my .bash_profile, as it was suggested in tutorial and I had not done it before, and thought that might be the problem.

Update 2 shut down terminal and tied again and getting the original problem "psyche Error" Yes, thank you for your feedback, I too, although not sure why, suspect it is to do with the 'secret' file or could it be changes the tutorial told me to make to my .bash_profile. The instructions were not very clear, wondering if that is where I messed up. If that is so then I would not know how to fix that.

Answer 1

The Psych gem is the wrapper around libyaml and used within Ruby's YAML class, so it's not surprising you think it could be the 'secrets.yml'; a YAML config file. I'd stay the course and find what isn't being formatted correctly.